Below Average

Poor

It's a fine, entertaining movie, with some solid acting from pretty much everyone.

Iron Man 3 is a strange movie, though, a Frankenstein monster which seems to be made of the best parts of several different action films which don't quite fit together: superhero movies, spy movies, buddy cop movies, comedies, and I think it's only through the magic of Robert Downey Jr. performance that the whole thing holds together.

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I saw it last night and this is pretty much how I felt.

I almost had the impression that Downey's agent wrote as much of the film as Black did. it seemed like every beat of the film [and the ending itself] was an excuse to get Downey out of the suit as much as possible so that "the star" was on camera and not the Iron Man character from the comics. Most of, if not all, of the big Iron Man action sequences consisted of Tony remotely controlling the suits or jumping in and out of them every ten seconds. The remainder of the action was either Stark running around like a wannabe SHIELD agent or the supporting characters getting their contractually mandated "moment of glory" (and given Pepper the Extremis virus was like weaponizing a piece of wet lettuce).

In these respects, it was less of an Iron Man movie and more of "Robert Downey Jr and Shane Black do 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang' in the Marvel U."

In addition, while the plot moved breezily along, if you thought about it for more than two seconds at a stretch, it collapsed:

So, apparently, having the shrapnel in his heart was elective the whole time? If so, the blood poisoning in the second movie makes absolutely no sense.

I suppose it is possible that, once he fixed "extremis," he used that to cure the heart problem. However, this begs the question, why not fix it before Pepper got infected?

Yes, Killian was evil. However, here Stark knows that the virus has an unexpected side effect that makes it even more dangerous to civilians. It sometimes accidentally blows up people in public. Fixing it would have hampered the whole combustion issue that was getting people killed and, if anything, made Killian's plans less, not more, dangerous.

Then there was the sequence where he taunts the Mandarin publicly and then gets his house blowed up. Why didn't the house have better security?

Tony Stark has been publicly outed as Iron Man for approximately five years now. Besides being a superhero, he's a brilliant scientist who tinkers with weaponizable gadgets constantly and somehow connected to SHIELD. He's been publicly attacked several times as a result, including in IM2. His first mission in IM was blowing up a terror cell. This is a man who has painted a target on his own back multiple times, a man who designs the best defense tech in the Marvel U (even if he-ahem-no longer allows it be used for military purposes [except when he does])....and he doesn't have his house set to to protect against weapons as conventional as helicopters and rocket launchers?

Again, while a nice set piece it seemed as if it was there simply to set up a reason to get Downey out of costume for the middle third of the film.

it seemed like every beat of the film [and the ending itself] was an excuse to get Downey out of the suit as much as possible so that "the star" was on camera and not the Iron Man character from the comics.

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Good, because Robert Downey jr. is much more entertaining than the Iron Man character from the comics ever was.

Yes. But that doesn't mean I want a Iron Man movie without Iron man. It means I want a movie with RD Jr playing his version of Iron man. This time it was less that and more RD Jr playing a Shane Black character.

I enjoyed the movie, and I had a fun time watching it. But in the end it just didn't engage me on the same level the other Marvel movies have so far. I'm sure I may get hell for this, but I enjoyed Iron Man 2 more than this, I felt Mickey Rourke was a much better villain over Guy Pearce.

And as for the Mandarin switch, I have no connection with him in the comics, not read a single Iron Man story that features him, and yet I was disappointed with the "twist." He was being built up as this scary terrorist that seemed very real based on past events and yet was still a bit of fantasy, then they take that away from us and give us another businessman in a suit.

Like I said though, I enjoyed watching it, there are actually quite a few bits I really loved. Namely Iron Man saving the passengers of Air Force One, that was a moment where I wanted to stand up and cheer. I also liked the assault on Stark Mansion, complete with Pepper wearing the armor for a time. I also loved all the references to The Avengers and how Tony had to deal with the aftermath of that.

I think this is a movie I definitely need to see again, as it's troubling that I can talk of so many instances that I enjoyed from the movie, and still have mixed feelings on it.

I suspect that somewhere in the various rewrites/editing they lost an explanation that Killian had been funding the 10 rings all along. that's why killian made the comment that he had always been the Mandarin and why he had the dragon tats in the final scene.

Tony Stark has been publicly outed as Iron Man for approximately five years now.

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It can't have been five years. More like just over three years. IM3 is definitely set in 2013, and IM2 was set in 2010, but it was also set "six months later", so IM1 must have been set in 2009/2010, not 2008.

Yes. But there's no way Stark could've known that.
For more realistic casualty moments, DC comic films are supreme.

An IRON MAN movie with more Stark and less Iron Man is acceptable to me. I suppose you could've called this movie TONY STARK. Not all Iron Men are Tony Stark now, but Tony Stark is still Iron Man. (Though having the ''I am -----line at the end of so many superhero films is quite the cliche now.) Remember that in the first ROBOCOP film, much of what made it a classic was Peter Weller getting his face back, so to speak. And his identity. If we have less Downey, you get more stuntmen. In IRON MAN 3, you get more of both.

I suspect that somewhere in the various rewrites/editing they lost an explanation that Killian had been funding the 10 rings all along. that's why killian made the comment that he had always been the Mandarin and why he had the dragon tats in the final scene.

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And that is really my biggest gripe with the the film.
That in the grand scheme of things I'm supposed to believe Killian has orchestrated everything/anything involved with the terrorist group The Ten Rings. It's not what Favreau and Feige said in interviews during IM or IM2. They were building to The Mandarin....as the central threat.
Then in interviews for IM3 Feige revealed how Shane Black approached him with his idea for the Mandarin and he approved the change......so changed from what I can only guess was a more true take on The Mandarin as the legit threat.

If Killian is in charge of AIM and it's funding I'm going to believe he's not giving any tech, even in smaller doses, to his 10 Ring army scattered about. They are having to steal Stark tech? It's just a disconnect in the grand scheme of it as an arc.

It's still a fun movie and I've seen it three times cause despite that, rather big gripe for me personally, it's still a really fun and engaging film otherwise. B/B- grade

it's a good popcorn flick. definitely better than 2. it's not the film I was expecting though.

I didn't see the Mandarin twist coming at all, and it was done really well. The actual reveal was a riot. However, it also let me down that we didn't get the comic version. In the end, this movie has the same major problem the others have. The main villain is lame. The trend continuing was a big letdown.

I can't believe I actually stayed for the after credits sequence. That was fucking horrible.

The rest was good, but in the end the only Marvel flick I like less than his one is IM2. I really hope they give Iron Man films a break for awhile after this. Iron Mans boring rogues gallery has tired me on the franchise. The films we got were good, so Marvel should quite while they're ahead.

If I was the Mandarin, I'd have a little dick like Killian to make up a fake me so that I could take everyone off guard later. That only really works if someone were already sniffing around my 10 Rings clubhouse though.

And as for the Mandarin switch, I have no connection with him in the comics, not read a single Iron Man story that features him, and yet I was disappointed with the "twist." He was being built up as this scary terrorist that seemed very real based on past events and yet was still a bit of fantasy, then they take that away from us and give us another businessman in a suit.

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Yeah that was my problem as well. Instead of the truly scary and unique threat posed by this uber-terrorist The Mandarin, we get just another guy with a grudge against Tony, who's got the superpowers of a second-rate X-Men villain.

Why were some people disappointed that Kingsley wasn't the Mandarin? What would make Trevor Slattery's "Mandarin" more scary than Killian's "Mandarin"? Blowing up more stuff? Killing more people? Having a different agenda - perhaps world domination, or killing all of humanity?

Why were some people disappointed that Kingsley wasn't the Mandarin? What would make Trevor Slattery's "Mandarin" more scary than Killian's "Mandarin"? Blowing up more stuff? Killing more people? Having a different agenda - perhaps world domination, or killing all of humanity?

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Because he was something different for a change. In the first film sure we got terrorists, but ultimately it was Jeff Bridge's character who was the main villain (guy in a suit). In the second movie we had Mickey Rourke as a variation on Whiplash, he was pretty cool, but then we find out the main villain is Sam Rockwell (guy in a suit). Finally we get this movie which seems to promise us something different...and yet we end up with Killian (guy in a suit). Yes each villain has some variation and something to make him different, but what it all boils down to is a guy in a suit.

So a petty terrorist would have been a better villain? What kind of challenge would that have posed for Stark?

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Because he was being built up as an even scarier version of Bin Ladin-- who could blow up Tony's mansion on a whim, hack into our computer systems, kidnap and murder people on live television, and cause massive explosions without leaving a trace.

You weren't sure how he did what he did, and it got you thinking that maybe he was more than just a standard terrorist, and maybe had some kind of otherworldly power or ability we didn't yet know about.